What I was suprised with was that the City Commission taking a certain amount of care to minimize any negative financial impact to the City – and by extension, the taxpayers – before agreeing to any deal.

I’m not going to pretend that the City did no wrong in this.  I have no idea what kind of consideration was given to Peter Studl’s proposal, if any.  Peter’s local, and it would have been nice to have a local owner.  No reason has been given for rejecting his proposal to the best of my knowledge, and frankly there should have been…no matter what it is.

But the fact is that a deal has been reached.  We’ll have a regional league, rather than the Arena2 that the Wildcats had been in.  Will this help or hurt?  Who knows.  Few seemed to go to the games to see if the next Kurt Warner was playing in their midst, but instead they wanted to watch a fast paced and exciting game.  That’s the nature of the arena game, and that should continue.  Personally, I don’t think it really matters what kind of league we’ve got.

But the City Commission didn’t rush into this one.  They seemed to do a bit of due dilligence with the Albany Panthers and their ownership.  Not only that, but they seemed to have negotiated a better deal (though I haven’t looked at either deal, so I could be way off).  Frankly, I’m actually impressed.  Did they learn their lesson?

Probably not, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut occassionally.  But they “found the nut” this time, and so I’m going to applaud them for it.  They balanced the needs to the city with financial common sense and we’re getting football and shouldn’t be stuck with a pile of expenses.  Not what I’m used to expecting from the City though. 

Don’t worry though, I won’t get used to it.  After all, this is the Albany City Commission we’re talking about here.  It’s bound to return to normal soon enough.